I've just taken over a site and the former webmaster is an IDIOT! He's threatening legal action, blocking from Google, etc.

I believe the owner of the site has the legal action angle covered, paper trail, paid invoices, etc. Her lawyer is taking care of that.

I don't see HOW he could block her site from being indexed by Google. Is this possible?

I don't really get what you're saying.
You hacked or bought this site?

And what's the problem?

No! I'm the new webmaster the owner hired because the old one wasn't doing anything she wanted. I believe she has the perogative to do that . I downloaded the files via ftp first with owner's permission and from ftp info which webmaster gave her..........and as I understand it, since she did pay for the site, the files are her to do or download as she wishes.

She paid him for the work, I think he's just blowing stuff, but that's not my problem. I just want to assure her that the ex-webmaster's just blowing smoke about BLOCKING her site from search engines.

O ok.
Well it's just a bunch of bullcrap.
You can't block a site from being index.
And if he can and does, he has a problem because she was paying him so she should be able to tell who he is.
And then you can sue him.

Hopefully the site owner, or you, has changed the passwords to the FTP access for the site so that the former webmaster can't get in to mess with things.

Without access to the site files, there's now way he/she could block from the search engines.. cause a nuisance maybe, but not block the site.

Thank you all, that's all exactly as I thought. I just wanted to verify with others as it's not wise to think we know everything!

I do everything aboveboard, I've heard of sore loser webmasters such as this and but never experiences it. He's a real amateur.........in SO many ways!

Yes, I have changed ALL pws, even servers, and have recommended she change her email pws as well, so he can't send or receive email in her name.

I appreciate your advice(s) very much.

I just found this site out of necessity, but I can tell it's a great one!

BTW, this is a business website, and is out there attracting business for which it was designed for....but it seems from some cursory research that some legal folks agree...(internet law being kind of new) that the designer is the author and the author is the owner....unless it is SPECIFIED IN THE CONTRACT.

So I may have to redesign the site?????
RE copyright, he (c) it to himself, I always (c) my sites to the owners, as I consider it theirs since they paid for it............however, I have been told that internet/website law seems to have a strong argument that the designer is the owner and the one who paid for the design is actually "renting" it in essence from the designer/owner.....again...unless it is SPECIFIED IN THE CONTRACT.

Any thoughts on this? The webmaster might have her on a technical point but that can easily be overcome with intimidation by her lawyer. Whom she says is going to give a pre-emptive shot across their bow and have her lawyer send the ex-webmaster nasty letter.

Quite frankly, stuff like this just wastes people's time. If this stuff got in front of a judge, it would be chucked out so quickly - losers can argue all they want, but they'd never get very far. In grey areas, common sense (usually) prevails...

Originally Posted by Foundationflash

Quite frankly, stuff like this just wastes people's time. If this stuff got in front of a judge, it would be chucked out so quickly - losers can argue all they want, but they'd never get very far. In grey areas, common sense (usually) prevails...

True............but there seems to be so little of it nowadays.

Here's a link someone sent me, might have some good info (have not had time to read it yet) JIC anyone's interested:
Symposium: A Cyberspace Perspective on Intellectual Property, Information Technology, and the Internet ---- Who Owns the Web Site?: The Ultimate Question When a Hiring Party Has a Falling-out with the Web Site Designer

The answer is "yes, a site can be blocked from search engines." There are two ways to do it: via robots.txt (http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html)

# go away
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Or via the URL removal tool search engines such as Google use. The latter tends to be the more permanent thing.

Buuuut...since you've got everything on your site and have full control (and were smart enough to change the passwords), you should be fine. I only posted that the two options were possible for a newcomer reading this thread that haven't taken the steps that you have.

I'm surprised it wasn't until the 10th post that someone answered about blocking search engines, but if you really want to do that, follow Adam's advice.

thanks. I have done it before on a private site by using the robots.txt! But as you said, I have control over that. Short of hacking he can't do a thing.

Secondly, with the Google URL removal tool I would assume anyone can request to be removed and that's as "bad" as he can be.

However, one (myself) need only re-request to be indexed by Google in that case.

Unless he has ABSOLUTELY no life, this game won't go on forever, should he choose to do that.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

I'm surprised it wasn't until the 10th post that someone answered about blocking search engines, but if you really want to do that, follow Adam's advice.

Sorry dude...I was on the road. I'm a bad WMT slacker. Bad, BAD slacker.

Originally Posted by Ladyborg

thanks. I have done it before on a private site by using the robots.txt! But as you said, I have control over that. Short of hacking he can't do a thing.

Secondly, with the Google URL removal tool I would assume anyone can request to be removed and that's as "bad" as he can be.

However, one (myself) need only re-request to be indexed by Google in that case.

Unless he has ABSOLUTELY no life, this game won't go on forever, should he choose to do that.

If I recall correctly (haven't needed to use that tool in years), they moved the tool over to Webmaster Tools. This forces webmasters to authenticate to their webmaster console and I believe to verify that they're in charge of the site before they can remove stuff. This theoretically would prevent a guy like the former designer from laying the hack down. I'm not 100% sure though, so don't hold me to that.

You'd be surprised at how vindictive web designers/webmasters can be. I've got a guy who worked for me on 3 projects (and finished 0) calling clients and claiming he did the work himself so they should bypass the middleman and hire him. Never underestimate the lack of a life of a bitter web designer.

Hiya,

That is correct. It is now in Webmaster Tools from Google and It is called Report Spam in our Index. I am not sure about Yahoo's one.

Does it really works? I don't think that googles takes in consideration a unique complaint or a coupple of them. I believe that Google will consider them as complains from competitors. I have reported a company here in my local competition and it didn't make any difference whatsoever. They are still cloaking away.... That was 5 months ago.

If your code is good enough and your content is relevant, etc... there is nothing to worry about.